The present invention relates to an improved massage apparatus making it possible, in simple and efficient fashion, to perform massages in which an action of suction and mobilization of the skin tissue is exerted on the patient.
In the rest of the description, the invention will be described with reference to an apparatus used for the treatment of human beings, but it is clear that an apparatus of this type could also be used for massaging animals such as horses, cattle, etc.
The invention relates more particularly to an improvement made to the massage apparatuses of the type which formed the subject-matter of patents published under 224 422 and 284 527, the apparatus according to the invention making it possible, at the same time, to obtain the advantages provided by the general design described in these documents, while eliminating the drawbacks which they may present.
In general, the apparatuses described in the aforementioned documents include, mounted inside a casing, two parallel rollers with a smooth surface and mounted free to rotate (or rotationally driven) in the casing, the said casing being connected to means which comprise a conduit whose end opens into the space contained between the rollers and which make it possible to create a reduced pressure in the casing in the space contained between these rollers, when the latter are applied against the patient's body.
In the solution described in FR-A-2 579 100, one of the rollers is positively driven in rotation and the second is combined with means making it possible to move it away from the drive roller. This solution is very complex and is not satisfactory because it involves specific means, such as a mechanical control system consisting of a lever actuated by the user in order to move the free roller away from the drive roller when starting. Furthermore, during the treatment, the separation is obtained by action of the skin fold formed between the rollers.
From the functional point of view, in this equipment the pressure exerted on the skin fold is difficult to control and, above all, it may be too high, and therefore traumatizing. Indeed, this pressure is given both by the suction and also by the action of the return means on the rollers, which tend to move them towards one another.
The solution in which the rollers though which a suction is drawn are mounted with a fixed inter-axial distance is satisfactory in the case of small apparatuses, for example ones with rollers 0.5 to 6 centimetres long, but it has been observed that, in the case of apparatuses in which the roller are longer, the efficiency obtained is less than that attained with the solution in which the rollers can move apart or move towards one another automatically during the massage operation.